Worst — and best — IT interview questions

Why are manhole covers round? Why do you ask? Tech managers weigh in on the practice of using brainteasers to screen IT candidates and share their own favorite interview questions.

Schmitt, like other IT hiring managers interviewed by Computerworld, believes "gotcha" questions in general do a poor job of bringing those soft skills to the fore.

Instead, Schmitt taps the eight members of his network support team to conduct group interviews for open positions in their department. He himself doesn't attend; he wants candidates to feel comfortable asking about "the boss."

We might ask a little bit about the tech stuff, but really we're looking out for the right mix of curiosity, passion and initiative. Joe Schmitt, network support manager, U.S. Bank

Schmitt has found his employees to be universally willing to help vet candidates. "I do my best to get the team involved. They like to know they're really making a good decision about a teammate — someone they may be spending more time with than they spend with their spouse."

If gotchas are out, what kinds of questions do help reveal the qualities Schmitt is looking for? He goes for a line of inquiry that's both open-ended and specific. "Tell me a time when you successfully adapted to change." "What does a good day at work look like?" "What about a bad one?" "How do you resolve disagreements?"

And one of his favorites: "Tell me about something you documented for others." This gets at the candidate's commitment to teamwork as shown by the effort he puts into making his work accessible to others, explains Schmitt, who has been in IT for 15 years, five as a hiring manager.

Such questions bring out a side to candidates that a skills-specific question may not. "People tend to come prepped to answer the technical questions," Schmitt says, less so the situational or behavioral ones. "I feel we're getting genuine responses to those."

Social skills, social questionsThad Neal has been in the IT business long enough to see the way the interviewing process has shifted. "When I graduated in 1990, the questions were all the standard ones: 'Tell me about your successes.' 'Tell me a time you overcame a failure.'"

Neal, a consulting director for Junction Solutions in Englewood, Colo., which provides ERP consulting services for the retail and food and beverage industries, has watched over the years as IT has moved from being one business function among many to serving as strategic lynchpin. With that shift in focus comes a shift in the balance of skills IT departments are interviewing for. (Article continues on next page.)

Favorite IT interview question

"Do you like to travel?"Thad Neal, a consulting director for Junction Solutions in Englewood, Colo., sometimes asks candidates for technical jobs if they like to travel. "What I'm looking for is not necessarily someone who says they love to travel, because the actual act of traveling is a pain," he explains.